The taxanes are best known by the first two marketed representatives of this chemical class, Taxol® and Taxotere®. Neither drug is orally bioavailable without being co-administered with some facilitating agent or processed into nanoparticles. Bristol Myers-Squibb has a compound which is the first of several orally active taxanes to enter clinical trial. It has been found in Phase I testing to have notable activity in heavily pretreated patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), including those pretreated with Taxotere® and/or Iressa® (gefitinib), a small molecule anti-epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitor.
EGFR antibodies can be selected from chimerized, humanized, fully human, and single chain antibodies derived from the murine antibody 225 described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,943,533 to Mendelsohn et al. The EGFR antibody can be, for example, cetuximab which is marketed as Erbitux™ by ImClone Systems, Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. The EGFR antibody can also be selected from the antibodies described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,235,883 to Jakobovits et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,558,864 to Bendi et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 5,891,996 to Mateo de Acosta del Rio et al.